Vancouver, Canada to Pretoria, South Africa. A Canadian expat trying to figure this place out.

Wednesday, 21 December 2016

It's a Christmas Miracle!

As it usually does, the universe acted in a funny way yesterday. I posted a rather lengthy blog about the trials and tribulations of getting the internet hooked up at our house. And, about an hour later, Telkom was at our door, unannounced (they were supposed to call before they came). I know for a fact that this had nothing to do with my blog post, as it had just been published and had virtually no readers (although 700 people visited the page in the first 12 hours of the blog going live, so thanks for that! Feel free to subscribe (a handy box is at the top right-hand side of the page) and/or share).

This is what navigating Telkom's customer service feels like.

After going through all the same processes we had already done a thousand times, the tech called Afrihost, the data provider, and proceeded to go through the same procedures AGAIN. Anyway, it turns out that this whole mess was a communication issue, which doesn't surprise me, because South Africans tend to talk a lot, but avoid actual communication as if will give them ass cancer or something. Apparently, Afrihost had been trying to connect the wrong line number and said it had been changed on Dec 15. We certainly didn't change it. Telkom may have. Or it may have never been changed at all. People tend to just say things here. You never know the entire truth, and trying to get to the bottom of anything is about as futile as a cat trying to bury a turd on a marble floor. I'm just going to accept this little Christmas miracle and enjoy having the internet at my house.